I can’t resist sharing some excellent thoughts from Daniel Stephan from the Norwegian Flyfishers Club team. Daniel and I were emailing about black, silver and orange tubes for salmon and especially in difficult lower water etc (I’d been talking about the Dark Horse templedog fly I use – created by Hakan Norling and Neil Stephenson and they kindly let me name the pattern which is pictured right, tied by Neil):

‘Yes, those colours your describe in that combination always work…in any river i guess 😉 I started to like shrimp flies, like cascades or just an orange shrimp with a nice Bucktail-tail in the August weeks [River Gaula], the 2011 season showed me to fish it more oftern…. In my point of view the later the season gets the more orange works well….as well Black/Orange monkey flies worked well later in the season, always when the water rose..’

And if anyone is thinking of joining me for Week 31 on the Gaula this summer (July 29-Aug5) then hear Daniel on this:

‘I myself had a very good week 31 in 2011, got 6 fish or so, with less fishing time..lets say average 4 hrs per day…and all over 5kg up to 8kg and 3 of them where totally silver and fresh, even sealiced, but as well a couple of really nice ones where caught up to 12kg from guests…so it can be a good week… In week 31 it is maybe even still interesting to fish at nights…pools like new pool or lower Tilseth and those with glides, fish start to move when its getting dark, a chance to get them then…so you should bring some black and silver tube flies…not too small..sunrays are fine as well of course. But also bring some bombers!! and hitch flies…all this stuff might work…can be interesting fishing! Because it is still summer fishing, not like later August where its more autumn fishing I would say…